“Red vs. Blue Season” Review/Recap: “Prologue” (Season 13 Episode 1)

With the premier of season 13 of Red Vs Blue, the Rooster Teeth team launches into the third and final installment of the Chorus Trilogy. “Do you ever get the feeling something really…really bad is going to happen?” Miles Luna, the writer and director of this series and the voice of the Mercenary We Love To Hate, Felix, tweeted out in January, along with a rather ominous picture of Grif and Caboose’s controllers. The potential danger the two well-loved characters could be in caused quite a stir among fans, and left no question in our minds that the final section of The Chorus Trilogy is going to be bigger, scarier, and undoubtedly more painful than previous seasons.

And nothing gets RvB fans more excited for what is bound to be an explosive season than an opening episode animated entirely out of the Halo game engine. Even in scenes where the characters are just standing around, which would have been done in-engine in previous seasons, the animation is fluid, varied, and fantastically implemented.

Animation from “Prologue”

The only machinima in this episode comes after the end title, where those fateful words come about again. Caboose asks Grif – “Do you ever get the feeling….” Any other show would rest easy that Miles’ tweet is nothing but a reference to this line, but Red Vs Blue fans learnt long ago never to overlook potential foreshadowing. Even now, we just can’t predict who on the team is going to make it off Chorus alive.

All the explosive animation in this prologue doesn’t detract from the historically fantastic writing and humor – the stuff that has really set RvB aside since long before the term “Motion Capture” was even in their vernacular. Although it’ll be a week before we see any extended scenes with the usual red and blue teams, the episode hardly feels lacking in character or action. The gags come hard and fast in the first half, a cameo team of loveable misfits interacting with each other with that particular RvB brand of perpetual insults; and the humor doesn’t stop when Felix and Locus waltz on screen and screw everything up with their usual panache (or Felix’s panache and Locus’ angry silence.)

Former Project Freelancer Director, Leonard Church.

Alongside the two mercs and their team of pirates, a few other characters we were much more surprised to see also make an appearance. Not many thoughts have been spared for the enigmatic former councilor of Project Freelancer, who faded into the background at the end of the Director’s storyline. But here, he walks back into our lives, allying himself with the mercenaries and ready to share information on the freelancers that could change the face of this war Control is waging. We’ve already seen them go through a lot, but it looks like the Washington and Carolina’s lives aren’t exactly going to be getting any simpler any time soon.

And of course, the episode ends with the usual thrilling twist (we’re reminded of Church’s angry query as to “Why is it that something dramatic seems to happen exactly every five minutes?!” in season five), and fans are left wondering who the mysterious prisoner could be. The answer is out there, with fans inspecting the clues and looking back to previous episodes, but in the name of avoiding spoilers, let’s just say that, if this episode and its hints are anything to go by, this season’s going to be a good one.